Close But No Cigar: Race

There is undoubtedly a great movie to be made about the modern-day political conflicts between American Latinos and African-Americans back in the 1990s -- but the 1998 movie Race is not it. It gets credit for at least trying to acknowledge some of the issues involved in such conflicts, but I all too often got the feeling while watching it that the movie was deliberately pulling its punches in regard to the main plot.

Perhaps most symbolic of the movie's problems was a scene in which a black political candidate (played by CCH Pounder) asked a group of white senior citizens to tell her their concerns -- only to receive a lot of trivial complaints about black basketball players. I don't doubt that such a scene might have happened in real life but I also can't help but wonder whether all complaints from white voters about various ethnic groups should be presumed to be that trivial. After all, mainstream op-ed writers frequently trivialized the complaints of blacks and Hispanics back in the 1990s -- and even today, when white Americans are presumably more "woke", there's a tendency to blow off any concerns expressed by minority voters any time such concerns conflict with the concerns of white people. So why is it in the interest of blacks and Hispanics to encourage such trivialization when the shoe is on the other foot?

In any event, the movie Race started out promisingly, then threatened to turn into a Mexican soap opera till finally settling for an ending that seemed all too believable yet also wrapped things up in way too convenient a package. As much as I wanted to love the ending, I could not help wondering how realistic it was for the screenwriters to conveniently blame a white non-Hispanic villain for the conflicts between the two lead characters (a black political candidate and a Hispanic political candidate) when real life has shown over and over again that the origin of such conflicts is not that simple. Anyway, I don't doubt that there are a lot of white non-Hispanics who get a kick out of playing the divide and conquer game in regard to blacks and Hispanics. But I also believe that a lot of black and Hispanic candidates who have issues with each other often have their own motives for such conflicts. To pretend otherwise is to pretend they're not human. And quite frankly, there are already enough people in this country who think that way without encouraging it.

But Differ Greatly in the Sequel: Machete Kills

Apparently Machete does vex. At least that is what he did in the 2013 movie Machete Kills, a sequel to the 2010 movie Machete.

I wanted to like this film a lot than I did but I could not help hating the way Robert Rodriguez liked to constantly repeat his jokes. And what he did to Michelle Rodriguez's character was just pathetic. He wasn't content to present her as a badass rebel wounded in battle; he had to make her a pathetic damsel in distress as well. She deserved a way better ending than that.

Ironically, Hollywood outcasts Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen came across a lot better even though their scenes were basically one-joke roles. And please don't get me started on how much more popular this movie seemed to be with liberal non-Hispanic critics than myself...

Of course, by now we should have seen the sequel to this movie and I suspect that if it hasn't been made by now, then it's never going to be made. Given director Rodriguez's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to this series, I suspect that even he lacked faith that Hollywood would give him enough funds to create Machete III. Of course, given his approach to the Michelle Rodriguez character, I'm not convinced that that's a bad thing but still...

Not Quite Caught Up in Traffic

I knew this movie was in trouble when the director seemed to want the audience to be more shocked at the sight of a white girl sleeping with a black drug dealer than at the sight of a Mexican policeman being murdered by Mexican drug dealers. It didn't help that he had one character give an impromptu -- and totally unmotivated -- sermon about the influence of white drug buyers on black neighborhoods -- a sermon I would ordinarily applaud if it did not seem so out of place in the movie. (And having it delivered by a person who was a white drug buyer himself did not improve it.)

I would like to think that the makers of this flick meant well but just the same I'm not exactly in a big hurry to see this movie again.

In Heaven, There Is No Corn



Easy enough to see why the 2007 movie Tortilla Heaven did not get much publicity. On one hand, it was not really a bad movie but on the other, it was not very memorable. The whole plot took place in a small New Mexican town full of eccentric characters -- though, ironically, the most eccentric of them was a transplanted English nudist (played by Olivia Hussey) -- that turned out to be the same town where a miraculous tortilla was discovered. The tortilla created a controversy that in turn attracted tourists and then next thing you know, the Devil himself showed up. No, seriously.

In light of the recent scandals involving the Catholic church, it seemed downright nostalgic to see a movie in which the local priest's worst sin was a rather childlike fascination with religious statues. But apart from that, there was not a whole lot about this movie I can recommend. On one hand, I did find it refreshing to see so many law-abiding Latino characters in one movie; on the other hand, well, I did mention that the Devil himself was played by a Latino, right?

I Wonder, Wonder Who, Who-oo-ooh, Who (Who Wrote the Book of Life)

I wanted to like The Book of Life a lot more than I did but I could not help having quite a few reservations. For example, there is a scene in the early part of the film in which a group of schoolchildren encountered a mysterious blonde museum guide. Despite my being the type of person who was once accused by a Hispanic co-worker of waving the Mexican flag, I could not help but find some of the comments this guide made about Mexico in this scene to be a bit over the top. (For that matter, I found it a bit odd that the guide was voiced by the same actress who played Kelly Bundy, but that's a topic for another day.)

It didn't help that we're never told where that scene took place or whether those children the museum guide talked to were supposed to be American or Mexican. Plus some of the story elements (the affection the kids had for Lady Death or the apelike image of one of the Mexican hero's ancestors) seemed deliberately calculated to raise an eyebrow or two.

That said, I liked it more than I expected to and my inner Percy Jackson fan especially liked the fact that the old Mexican folklore tale that allegedly inspired this movie was in fact an old Greek myth. (What? You don't think Hispanics can be familiar with Greek mythology? Please think again.)

Of course, the Ray Bradbury reference at the end was also a nice touch.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see how this movie compares to Coco. Especially since most of the TV ads for that movie make it seem like The Book of Life II.

I Saw Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas!, Just So You Know!

I thought I knew everything there was to know about Puerto Rican history before I saw the 2006 documentary Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas! (aka I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know!). Then halfway through this documentary, my jaw dropped open when I came upon its revelation of a historical event so awful that I was surprised that there was not still a major scandal about it. And if said event had happened in the continental U.S. to white middle-class women, I suspect it would have inspired a major scandal. But since it took place in Puerto Rico and involved poor Puerto Rican women, it joined the ranks of so many historical events that ended up being "forgotten" by most American history books.

When this documentary was first released, it was written off by most critics as just another celebrity home movie. And given the amount of film its co-director Rosie Perez devoted to herself and her various friends and relatives, I could see why some critics reacted like that. Yet it seemed equally obvious that there was a lot more to the documentary than that. After all, Perez also devoted a lot of film to portions of Puerto Rican history that are rarely mentioned in conventional history books (for example, the Vieques protests, forced sterilization, the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, etc.). Granted, it would be nice if she had the time and resources to devote even more film to those subjects but as it was, she had so much ground to cover in regard to those subjects that there was no way she could have done them justice with just one movie. Anyway, it hardly seems fair to blame Rosie Perez for not doing more about these topics when mainstream film directors like Michael Moore have been ignoring these same topics for years.

In any event, you don't necessarily have to be Puerto Rican to find something of interest in this documentary. Nor do you have to be Puerto Rican to find something in the historical events Ms. Perez covers that will make you depressed or angry. And you certainly don't need to be Puerto Rican to hope that all the bad things Ms. Perez mentions in this film eventually prove to be stuff of the past. Because the alternative would be even more depressing than anything you see in this film.

Trying to Find a Better Life at the Movies

I am always tempted to recuse myself from reviewing movies like the 2011 release A Better Life because it is hard to pretend I can be unbiased about the subject manner. But then it is very hard for me to be very unbiased about many subjects. Besides, it is not like diehard Anglophiles recuse themselves from reviewing English movies. Nor do Francophiles recuse themselves from critiquing the latest Gallic film. If anything, I tend to be a little harder on movies about Mexican-Americans and their immigrant parents because my expectations are higher. I find it ridiculous to pretend that movies about Mexicans should be novelties when there are already so many of us in the American movie-watching population. Moreover, I find it equally ridiculous to pretend that we are incapable of inspiring the same great stories that we take for granted in other segments of the American population.

In any event, A Better Life is not the best movie about Mexican-Americans and immigrants that I have ever seen -- but it is not a bad movie either. After having seen Mexican actor Demián Bichir play a wealthy drug-dealer-turned-politician in the American cable TV series Weeds, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he played a character on the other end of the class spectrum -- though I am not quite happy to note that his two biggest parts in America thus far involve variations on decades-old stereotypes.

Some parts of the movie were a bit too good to be true. Bichir's character Carlos Galindo, a humble illegal immigrant working as a landscape worker in southern California, seemed at times to be a bit too mellow for a guy who has had so many setbacks in his life. The conflict between him and his American-born son seemed to get resolved almost a tad too easily to be believable. But some areas -- like the relationship between him and his sister -- were all too believable, and even the rather silly event that landed him in trouble was more believable than most illegal immigrant apologists would have you believe. (I am not an expert on illegal immigration but I have met enough such people to know that while some such are more law-abiding than one would expect from their circumstances, still others are not quite as law-abiding as they could be.)

For what it is worth, my own father was never an illegal immigrant but he did have the same air of being wiser than his years that Bichir brings off so well in this movie. Indeed, much of this film's merits lies in the way it focuses on aspects of Mexican and Mexican-American culture that are still invisible to most American movie-goers.

If there is one such drawback to such a movie, it is that we are fast approaching the point where most Anglo-American movie-goers are not likely to welcome future work in this area. Already there is a tendency to see such movies as propaganda more than art, which I find ironic since it can be argued that movies that show the opposite view of illegal immigration are also more propaganda than art. Besides, propaganda tends to be in the eye of the beholder, and while I must admit that my views of illegal immigration are a bit more mixed than those of most Hispanic liberals, I must confess that I grow increasingly wary of those who only cry "Bias!" whenever a particular story is not in their favor.

But then most people rarely go to a movie theatre to have their political opinions challenged. And even more rarely to have them changed.

Cinema Indocumentado

I have seen so many bad illegal alien movies over the years that it often seems like a miracle to come across one that is actually good. This is not to say that such films are rare. I could sing the praises of movies like El Norte and My Family all day but unfortunately, not all films dealing with Mexican illegal aliens are up to the standards of those films.

More often, they are up to the standards of the 1980 exploitation flick Border Cop, which starred Telly Savalas as a tough but kind border patrolman and which featured Michael V. Gazzo as a local crime boss named Chico Suarez who just happened to speak with the same accent Gazzo used for his Mafioso character in The Godfather, Part II. It says something about how bad this particular movie was that one of the most likable characters in this movie -- a Mexican female immigrant, natch -- ended up getting raped for seemingly no other reason than to give the Savalas character an excuse to show what a badass he was when he went after the rapist. In all too many such movies, the Mexican characters seemed to have little reason to exist apart from giving the Anglo heroes a chance to show how brave and noble they were and Border Cop was no different.

Granted, the USA does not have a monopoly on such bad movies. The 1985 Mexican exploitation flick La Tumba del Mojado presented such a downbeat view of the United States and the type of life awaiting those Mexicans who make it here that a Mexican acquaintance theorized that it was part of her government's plan to discourage illegal immigration. The only Anglos shown on-screen spoke with thick Texas accents and were depicted as being just a tad more friendly than the Wehrmacht. One of the few friendly faces the illegal immigrant of the title* met in the US belonged to a drug dealer who befriended the immigrant and eventually involved him in his business -- an involvement which, of course, had tragic results.

Ironically, one of the better movies I have seen concerning this issue is the 1949 drama Border Incident, one of the first American movies that dealt with this subject. Of course, this film was made during the heyday of the bracero program (a government program by which Mexican agricultural workers were transported to the US to help out American farmers). Back then, illegal immigration still seemed like a novelty and while the movie's writers expressed their share of sympathy for the Mexicans who choose to illegally enter the US, the movie still emphasized the importance of immigrating the legal way.

Nevertheless, the movie's villains were not the poor devils who crossed the border without government approval but the Latino and Anglo criminals who smuggled them across and then preyed on them. Indeed, the number of young Mexicans who fell victim to these crooks became so great that the Mexican and American governments teamed up to bring the crooks to justice. The Mexican side was represented by Ricardo Montalbán, who played Pablo Rodriguez, a Mexican policeman who went undercover as a Mexican peon. The American side was represented by future Senator George Murphy, who played Jack Bearnes, the federal agent who assisted Montalbán in his mission.

Contrary to American movie tradition, Rodriguez did not die the traditional early death Hollywood usually reserves for minority characters. Instead he ended up becoming the hero of the movie while Bearnes ended up becoming a victim of the bad guys -- quite a daring plot development when you consider that this movie was made at a time when many restaurants, theatres and public pools in the Southwest still discriminated against Mexicans and Latin heroes were far from the norm in American movies.

Could a film like Border Incident be made today? Not likely, given that the bracero program which partially inspired it no longer exists. For that matter, the idea of the Mexican and American government cooperating today to bust an international ring of immigrant smugglers seems highly unlikely as well. But it would be nice to pretend it was possible, if only in dreams.

* Mojado is a not so nice Spanish word for "illegal immigrant" which usually translates as "wetback" in English. It is often used in the titles of Mexican songs and movies and one relative of mine even claimed to have once seen a T-shirt that pitted a vehicle labeled "Mojado Power" against a vehicle labeled "Chicano Power." However, it is not a word that most Spanish-speaking people knowingly use in polite company.

Disappearing Act

It's funny how movies which imagine an USA without Mexicans never seem to imagine an USA suddenly devoid of Mexican lawyers or doctors or cops or nurses or even computer operators. Nor do they rarely portray an USA devoid of Mexican military men -- which is quite odd, considering the number of Americans of Mexican descent in the U.S. Armed Forces. Instead, it is always Mexican menial workers such as maids, janitors, gardeners and fruit pickers who seem to be the main ones affected by such a situation. At least, that is how it seems in the 2004 movie A Day Without a Mexican.

In a way, I get the movie's point. If we were to deport all the Mexicans who were in the USA illegally, it would create a big hole in our society. And though the movie does tend to overdo it with the melodrama, the movie's subplot involving the one Mexican who didn't mysteriously vanish proved to be quite effective in spite of itself.

Yet as much as I enjoyed the movie's humor, I couldn't help but find the movie's humor all too convenient. After all, all too many non-Mexican people in the USA already have trouble thinking of Mexican-Americans as anything other than illegal aliens. Why encourage them? And don't Mexican-Americans who aren't illegal aliens have stories worth telling too? If so, why do we always pretend that the only Mexican-Americans worth telling stories about are the ones here illegally?

Five Movies to Watch on Cinco de Mayo

1. Salt of the Earth (1954).

The one movie about Mexican-Americans that was banned by the U.S. government. In fact, the U.S. government went so far as to try and deport the movie's lead actress in an effort to prevent it from being made. Ironically, you can rent it today at Blockbuster Video -- if you can still find one open.

2. El Norte (1983).

One of the most powerful films about illegal immigration I have seen thus far. It is not necessarily about Mexican immigrants though it has more to say about the interactions between the various types of Hispanic immigrants and the native-born Mexicans than most movies of its kind.

3. My Family (1995).

One of the most ambitious films made about Mexican-American life thus far.

4. Lone Star (1996).

Director John Sayles' depiction of life in a Southwestern border town and the various relationships that exist between Anglos and Hispanics in said town, framed against the backdrop of a murder mystery involving a former sheriff. It's not always as imaginative in said depiction as I would like but it does contain one of the most interesting metaphors for the relationship between the United States and Mexico that I have yet to see on screen.

5. Machete (2010).

But, of course.

Machete Don't Vex

Every time I've been ready to give up on filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, he managed to come up with a film that was way better than I could have hoped for and last year's Machete was no exception. It is not every one's taza of tea, of course. Indeed, Rodriguez appeared to have gone out of his way in the trailers to tick off a particular type of anti-Hispanic chauvinist who has become quite common on the Internet. Yet the film never came across as the type of boring propaganda piece that appealed only to die-hard political southpaws. Granted, it is not likely to have strong appeal to the type of people who like to congratulate themselves on their dislike of Hispanic illegal aliens but then there are already enough films out there that pander to such folks.

Anyway, Machete had enough humor in it that it could just as easily be seen as a parody of Mexican exploitation films as it could be seen as an example of such. It did not hurt that it starred Rodriguez movie veteran Danny Trejo in the title role. Though Trejo was getting a bit old to play a convincing romantic lead, he was still able to play a convincing action hero, in this case the title character Machete (so-called because his favorite weapon of choice was, of course, a machete). Along for the ride were Michelle Rodriguez as a mysterious taco truck owner, Jessica Alba as a Hispanic border patrol agent and Cheech Marin as a priest. (Yes, you read that last part right.) Opposing Machete were a host of Hispanic and Anglo villains including a Mexican druglord played by Steven Seagal and a Bush-like politico played by Robert De Niro.

Oddly enough, the queasiest part of the movie came not from the shameless ethnic jingoism about which many right-wing critics of this movie had warned. After all, Machete killed almost as many Latino villains as he did Anglo villains and much of the film's most obviously political scenes -- for example, the "big" immigration rally in which Alba's character declared her conversion to Machete's cause -- were played for laughs as often as they were played straight. No, the most worrisome part of the film was the amount of surprisingly graphic violence which bordered -- no pun intended -- on splatterpunk territory. I am not so naive as to pretend that graphic violence is unusual in a mainstream action thriller but it has been a very long time since I have seen disembowelment and finger severing treated so casually in such a movie. It was almost as if Rodriguez was not so much interested in competing with Sergio Leone as he was in competing with Clive Barker.

Quibbles about violence aside, Machete still managed to be more entertaining than I expected. And I suspect a Machete II might be lurking somewhere down the road if Rodriguez has his way. If not, it should be.

Two Characters in Search of an Éxito

Ay, Dios! And I thought Spanglish had a condescending view of Hispanics. At least it attempted to have some sort of story and some type of characters. Writer/director Brad Silberling's 2006 “comedy” Ten Items or Less could not be bothered to attempt that much. Instead we get some type of experimental movie comedy whose “comic” high point had otherwise likable actor Morgan Freeman following around an elderly Mexican store clerk and imitating him in an allegedly humorous manner. And this, mind you, was supposed to be part of the funny part of the movie.

At the beginning of the film, Freeman played a character which was supposed to be a thinly disguised version of his real self and Jonah Hill played a character who could not help calling attention to the fact that we were watching a movie. Hill dropped Freeman off at a Mexican supermarket in order to let him allegedly research an upcoming movie role whereupon he promptly ran into Scarlett Morales, a Spanish store clerk played by Paz Vega. Freeman ended up hooking up with Morales for reasons that never really made sense and following her to a job interview. Along the way, they had more than few philosophical discussions but for the most part, the two characters seemed to exist merely to allow Silberling to poke fun at the banality of their surroundings, ridicule which might have been more sympathetic if Silberling had had anything particularly interesting or imaginative to say with these characters but he did not.

Instead we get a series of condescending looks at various locations in blue-collar LA followed by a lot of really patronizing dialogue. Both Morgan and the scriptwriter evidently wanted to give us the impression that there was something particularly amazing about Ms. Morales that made it worthwhile to sit through the entire movie but they never quite managed to put this across in a convincing manner -- and as a result, the movie seemed even more patronizing toward her and the other Hispanic characters than a more conventional movie would have been.

I suppose Morales’ story arc was supposed to be an allegory for every poor sap who had to spend countless hours at thankless jobs until he or she finally made it big in Hollywood but unfortunately we never get to know enough about Ms. Morales to care that much whether she succeeds or fails. And it does not help that the other people in such environments receive even less attention than Ms. Morales. If just once the script had showed sympathy for such people, I might have taken the movie more seriously. But instead I found myself acutely missing the days when Hollywood still made movies like Bachelor Mother and The Shop Around the Corner -- movies that perhaps were not the most politically correct but at least took their characters seriously enough to give them decent storylines and dialogue. Instead, Ten Items or Less treated these items as if they were kitsch best reserved for the type of people who usually go for black velvet Elvis paintings and portraits of card-playing dogs.

Oh, well. If nothing else, this movie taught me that putting more dark-skinned actors and actresses in front of the camera is not necessarily going to make for better movies if they receive no backup from the folks behind the camera. Nor was thinking outside the box necessarily going to lead to making better movies if you did not come up with better ideas. But then all this should have been obvious before I saw this movie. And it is not necessarily just me who needs to learn these lessons.

I'm Dreaming of a Latino Christmas Movie

Geez, one would think that if Hollywood was going to wait until the 21st century to make a Latino Christmas movie, they would at least get it right. Not that 2008's Nothing Like the Holidays was a bad movie. It just was not the instant classic I kinda expected after all the hoopla I read about it.

The movie itself was about a family of Puerto Ricans and their assorted significant others who were gathering for a family Christmas celebration in Chicago. The father (played by Alfred Molina) was a bodega owner who might or might not be having an affair. His wife (played by Elizabeth Peña) was contemplating a divorce. One of his sons was a returning veteran who had issues with the girlfriend he left behind while yet another son was having issues with his white non-Hispanic wife. Though many scenes in the movie were neatly done -- the trailer had led me to expect a far broader comedy than ever turned up on screen -- it was still depressing to note how familiar some of the plot elements were: a murdered sibling, a non-Latin wife, a spouse who may or may not be unfaithful, an old girlfriend who may or may not have been pregnant with a certain family member's illegitimate child... To be fair, things improved toward the end but for a while there the movie seemed all too predictable.

Moreover, certain details were off. I could not help but wonder why a Puerto Rican would have the first bars of a Mexican folk song as a tune on his car horn and why Alfred Molina's character used the same Spanish term of endearment for his wife that I used to use for my Mexican grandmother. Granted, even the best screenwriters can't know everything, but given that one of the movie's screenwriters -- Rick Najera -- was Latino, I kinda expected a bit more than the same old Hollywood hand wave.

It is to the cast's credit that the movie is still watchable. (Though I must confess that seeing former I Married Dora star Elizabeth Peña as a would-be grandparent was almost as shocking to me as seeing her former co-star Juliette Lewis appear on an episode of My Name Is Earl.) Indeed, I found the movie to be a pleasant enough time-waster. But I hardly doubt I will be visiting it again next winter. And is not the whole point of a holiday movie that you wish to see it over and over again?

Maybe they will get it right next time.

Citizen Cheech: Born in East L.A.

Long before Spielberg started taking heat from critics for the opportunities he had wasted with his adaptation of Andrew Niccol's The Terminal, classical film auteur Cheech Marin was wasting an equally promising premise with the 1987 movie version of his song-and-MTV-video “Born in East L.A.”

The main question posed by this movie is quite simple: if you were caught without your driver's license or other ID, how exactly would you prove you're an American citizen? More importantly, how could you keep yourself from getting deported? Granted, this is not the type of question that most Americans have to worry about. But there are unfortunately some Americans who have to worry about this question far more than other Americans. And while much of this film has become dated, this aspect unfortunately has not.

It would be nice to say this is a great film or even a promising comedy. But unfortunately, Marin never quite develops the plot enough to qualify the movie for either description. Too much of the film's running time is wasted on unfunny skits and overly sentimental subplots. And while the movie itself is not painfully bad, it hardly lives up to the promise of the main premise.

So why do I watch it so often?

Perhaps because it's one of the few movies that attempts to make a point about America's Kafkaesque immigration policies.

Or perhaps because of Daniel Stern's performance as a Tijuana conman who reveals in an understated scene that he -- unlike Cheech's character -- can never go back home to the US.

It's certainly not because of Paul Rodriguez, whose performance as a dumb immigrant can be mercifully described as being not much better than it should be.

Anyway, it hardly seems like the type of film that the Bill O'Reillys of the world would approve of, and it's tempting to recommend it for that reason alone.

But only if El Norte or Lone Star are not available...

No Puedo Comprender o Entender Spanglish

Ay, Dios! It was really hard for me to take the 2004 film Spanglish all that seriously. Yes, I know. It was a comedy. But even by comic standards, it was hard to take seriously. What was the main point of this movie anyway?

Anglos can be condescending to the Latins they hire? El Norte covered that same ground better over two decades ago. By now, it's almost a cliché.

Success is a bad thing? Sure, I can see the Mexican-Americans in El Paso and East LA taking that message very seriously...

And in these days of layoffs and downsizing, how many people worry about being "too" successful anyway?

Yes, I know. It's escapism. And some scenes I'll admit were very funny. For example, the scene in which Adam Sandler's character John Clasky argues with his Mexican maid Flor Moreno (played by Spanish actress Paz Vega) while her daughter Cristina (played by Tejana actress Shelbie Bruce) translates for both John and Flor.

But, c'mon. A film that implied you have to go through Texas to get to California from Mexico? A film that implied most Mexicans choose to come to certain parts of the US based on the number of Mexicans already there and not, say, the number of jobs available there?

And since the script chose to make race an issue, why cast a Spanish actress like Paz Vega for the part of a character who considered herself non-white? After all, many Spaniards not only consider themselves white, but have been historically obnoxious about it. And Mexicans of Spanish descent definitely consider themselves white. Indeed, they get insulted if you imply they're anything else.

Why not cast someone who was not European? LA has one of the largest Latino populations in the country. And yet they couldn't find one American-born Latina actress who could play this part? Let's hear it for outsourcing...

Why for that matter was the main Mexican character in this movie a maid? Yes, I know many Mexican women in LA are maids and that it would be unrealistic to see an illegal alien like Flor in an upper-class position.

But why is it that at a time when more and more Latinas are entering the middle and upper classes in this country that so many Hollywood movies see fit to cast Latinas as either servants or illegal aliens, if not both? And why do you so rarely see a Latina character in a Hollywood movie who is anything else?

I'm not the most politically correct person in the world, but I get all so tired of seeing yet another Hollywood movie pretend that the type of Latinas I see every day just don't exist. And yet most of the complaints Anglo film critics have had about this movie have concerned how Clasky's Anglo wife was portrayed. How nice to see how some things never change...

Gatita Ballou

It would be nice to make some snarky remark about Bandidas representing the true history of the American Southwest or how it demonstrates how the West was really won. However, that would make it sound like the type of dull, boring film that only a hardcore Chicano Studies major can love.

Instead, it seems far more cool to point to the scene in which Penelope Cruz stands on a horse while motioning it to get closer and closer to a wall she's trying to climb over. In short, a scene involving a cute girl on a horse. If that's not something with universal appeal, then I don't know what is. (Besides, this movie takes place in Mexico, not the American Southwest.)

Anyway, it doesn't hurt that the two stars of the movie -- Salma Hayek and Ms. Cruz -- are cast against type. Cruz, la infanta (princess) of Spanish cinema, is cast as a simple farm girl and Salma Hayek, the ultimate mexicana, is cast as an arrogant Spanish aristocrat. (If you know something about the perverse love-hate relationship Mexico has in regard to Spain, Ms. Hayek's role seems especially ironic.) The two of them join forces when Hayek's father is killed and Cruz's father is nearly killed, and eventually they start robbing banks.

Unfortunately, Steve Zahn comes along as a thinly disguised MacGyver character whose chief purposes in the film seems to be (1) giving the two women someone to fight over, and (2) providing clues to the culprit who killed Hayek's father. (What? Hayek and Cruz's characters couldn't figure that out on their own?)

Zahn is not necessarily a bad addition to the cast, but he doesn't add as much as you would think. Nor does it help that the plot liberally borrows from other movies (Cat Ballou, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.) without coming up with many original ideas of its own.

That final scene is cute though. No Thelma y Luisa finale para Penny y Salma! And not just because they did not have automobiles back then.

What I Learned at the Video Store Today

My Family is an English-language movie about a Mexican-American family, the majority of whom speak English as a first language. Most of the actors are American and the bulk of the storyline takes place within the United States.

Yet the good folks at the local Blockbuster Video store always put it in the Foreign Film section. Ironically, they don't do this with other English-language films like The Godfather -- even though there are often portions in such films in which characters speak a language other than English. For some reason, only My Family gets this treatment. And yet other video chains often put the same film in the Drama section.

Ironic, isn't it?